Legal Commentary

Second, the Rovian tactics of using hot button cultural issues to motivate the Republican base ultimately devoured the Rovian strategy of permanently expanding the Republican electoral coalition to include moderate suburbanites, independent voters, a healthy chunk of Hispanic voters and a slice of conservative African Americans. In other words, to the extent that cultural appeals did have salience in times of economic uncertainty, they turned off key constituencies as much as they energized others. Moderates and independents like to think of themselves as tolerant whether or not they are more tolerant than anyone else; red meat appeals on cultural issues like homosexuality, coded appeals to racial or ethnic differences, hostility to foreigners, or insinuations that one's opponents are anti-American may delight the base, but they can backfire because it appears to moderates and independents that they will be aligning themselves with intolerance. When George W. Bush sought immigration reform a few years back, he discovered to his chagrin that Rovian tactics had undermined the Rovian strategy of bringing Hispanics into the Republican coalition. The Republican base wants to protect the borders from aliens and immigrants it regards as suspicious and threatening to America. This not only adds to the image of intolerance, it also turns off lots of Hispanic voters. Finally, the Republicans' inability to capture even a slice of African-American voters was overdetermined this year, with the Democrats running Barack Obama, the first African-American candidate to win the nomination of a major political party.

Both John Avlon and Joe Gandelman argue that this election cycle is a thorough repudiation of Rove's style of politics. What they say is worth reading. I am somewhat less sure that these tactics will not return; indeed, I think that Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, to name two examples, will rely on them heavily if either runs in 2012. The real question is whether they will be enough to sustain a majority.

For the moment, at least, the answer seems to be that a Rovian style of politics will not be enough. The Republican base is shrinking, while a new Democratic coalition is being formed: The new Democratic coalition includes people in metropolitan areas (now importantly including the suburbs not just the cities), knowledge workers, the poor, Hispanics, African-Americans, and traditional liberals (note how these groups overlap and partially reinforce each other). This new coalition is the successor to the old New Deal Democratic coalition of working class voters, labor unions, the poor, Catholics, African-Americans, and liberals which long ago fell apart.

We won't know whether this new coalition will prove lasting-- like the New Deal and Reagan coalitions before it-- for some time. But if it does hold together, it means that the Republicans will have to come up with new ways to win.

Full post as published by Balkinization on November 03, 2008 (boomark / email).